• areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    An OS or a hypervisor can run in bare metal. If I have Windows running in KVM, KVM is running bare metal but Windows isn’t. Ditto with ESXi or Hyper-V. In the case of your setup Linux and KVM are both bare metal, but Windows isn’t. KVM, ESXi, Xen are always running a privilege level above their guests. Does this make sense?

    The difference between KVM and the more conventional Type 1 hypervisors is that a conventional type 1 can’t run along side a normal kernel. So with Linux and KVM both Linux and KVM are baremetal. With Linux and Xen, only Xen is baremetal, and Linux is a guest. Likewise if you have something like Hyper-V or WSL2 on Windows, then Windows is actually running as a guest OS, as is Linux or any other guests you have. Only Hyper-V is running natively. Some people still consider KVM a Type 1, since it is running bare metal itself, but you can see how it’s different to the model other Type 1 hypervisors use. It’s a naming issue in that regard.

    It might help to read up more on virtualization technology. I am sure someone can explain this stuff better than me.

    • Wolf@lemmy.today
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      1 day ago

      Does this make sense?

      It’s still a little confusing but I get what you are saying. I’ll look into it. Thanks for explaining :)